I hear this a lot, that Lyft/Uber could allow the same flexibility if they wanted to.
It's not that the law dictates this shift, it's that the economics do. Requiring full employment means you can hire less drivers.
If you have less drivers, you need more control over when they drive in order to make sure when customers are looking for a ride, they can find one, hence shifts.
Basically this. As best I can tell, most of the flexibility Uber and Lyft want is the flexibility to pay people less and give them less benefits and prevent them from being able to unionize/organize effectively.
Assuming that what Lyft is saying about "4 out of 5 drivers don't support" is accurate, that would seem to imply that this is also about giving flexibility to all the people who are only driving 5 hours a week to pick up some spare pocket change. Which is the model for how this would mostly work that is invoked by the word "rideshare."
I do see a potential problem here of the interests of people who do this as their job being unnecessarily put into direct conflict with the interests of people who don't do this as their job.
People being taken advantage of by unfair business practices are usually still making an active choice to participate in those unfair practices. People making below minimum wage would likely rather keep that below minimum wage job than be fired because the company refuses to pay them more. That is still not a valid argument against the minimum wage.
A business model that relies on unfair business practices is not a viable business model. We just need to make sure that the employees caught in this transition have a social safety net that protects them from the financial repercussions of implementing these higher standards for all employees.
Surely "ridesharing" should be reserved for when a group of people share the same vehicle and all are going in the same direction, with another purpose than driving the group there. If I drive my friend to the airport and I then drive back we did not share a ride I gave him a ride.
It's physically impossible to flip burgers at McDonalds and Burger King at the same time. Presumably, it would be pointless for a driver to work for Uber in the morning and Lyft in the evenings.
They certainly do if that cashier is working the same shift at McDonalds as when he's supposed to be at Burger King. His manager will also care if his work at another employer affects his performance when he's working his shift at Burger King.
They certainly don't let you work for both at the exact same moment in time (which is quite common with drivers who have both Uber and Lyft open at same moment). Also Burger King generally sets your schedule and McDonalds usually sets your schedule. It's usually not feasible to work for both, because they both might end up scheduling you in the same time slot.
You are describing a literal impossibility as your example, being physically present at the Burger King and McDonald’s at the same time.
It’s the very same thing as say a driver can’t give a passenger a ride for Uber at the same time they are giving a ride for a Lyft passenger.
> It's usually not feasible to work for both, because they both might end up scheduling you in the same time slot.
You are essentially trying to argue no one Can work 2 jobs because of potential scheduling conflicts. Plenty of people work 2-3 jobs, often times for competitors in the same industry.
Not quite. If Uber and Lyft must shoulder the burden of full-time employee status, they should get the benefits, too: dictating when someone works for maximum profit, and a no-compete clause in the contract.
The best solution is for the state to end the distinction between independent contractors and full-time employees. I wonder if there's a way to manipulate state corporate taxes and credits to essentially nullify the federal employee status rules. Increase corporate state income tax, use the revenue to credit the employer's portion of social security tax and the independent contractor's excess social security tax. Put a state sales tax on group medical insurance plans and use the funds to provide a public option. Could get complicated, but there's probably a way.
When they talk about "shift work" they're referring to the way the taxi industry works. The reason the taxi industry works that way is because most drivers drive company cars which are owned & maintained by the company. Drivers that own their own cars can drive whenever they want to. There are no shifts.
I drove a taxicab for more than a year back in the 90's. That's the way it worked then. Most drivers were shift because they "rented" the car from the company and shared it with other workers. A few drivers were owner-operators who got to set their own hours. This is closer to the model that Uber & Lyft operate under today.
So when Lyft claims that they would be forced to enforce shift work on their owner-operators, this is a lie. There is already a model for this type of driving that predates Uber & Lyft and they're just choosing to ignore it now because it serves their current interests.
If Uber enforces "shift work", I am sure those shifts will be like city bus shifts, constantly filled by trips with minimal driver rests; than like yellow cab shifts, which are normally idle and dispatched sparsely.
> It's not that the law dictates this shift, it's that the economics do.
You can check their S-1 filing for the “economics” of it...Uber before going public was losing money and acknowledged the legal risk they had been misclassifying drivers as contractors and should drivers be reclassified as employees it’s an existential threat to Uber.
That’s the economics of it...Uber knew they were in the wrong, they knew the day of reckoning was coming and investors took the damn thing public for maximum profits and to cash out and leave others holding the bag.
But the reality is the whole employee/independent contractor issue is just a scapegoat for investors to point their finger at regulations and say that’s why the business failed, but the truth is even without the illegal classification of drivers Uber would never have turned a profit.
This isn't how their S-1 reads at all... they never say they misclassified drivers. The drivers were truly independent contractors under the law at the time they filed and they note that if they were converted to employees this would cause a GREAT increase in costs...
You took a potentially objective point and added a ton of spin to it :/
Of course they don’t admit they misclassifying the drivers, but Under the S-1 risk factors:
The independent contractor status of Drivers is currently being challenged in courts and by government agencies in the United States and abroad. We are involved in numerous legal proceedings globally, including putative class and collective class action lawsuits, demands for arbitration, charges and claims before administrative agencies, and investigations or audits by labor, social security, and tax authorities that claim that Drivers should be treated as our employees (or as workers or quasi-employees where those statuses exist), rather than as independent contractors... Nevertheless, we may not be successful in defending the independent contractor status of Drivers in some or all jurisdictions... any such reclassification would require us to fundamentally change our business model, and consequently have an adverse effect on our business and financial condition.
In fact the IPO includes citations to multiple lawsuits including one they settled for $20M for improper classification.
I think the ultimate sticking point is benefits and payroll taxes, and what a lot of the friction is that it's piecework that doesn't have a "conversion" to hours (which are how a lot of our benefits are normally calculated).
What really needs to happen is that conversion rate needs to be established for this kind of work. So if an average driver can do 20 fares per day, times 20 working days per month, then a "full time" uber employee drives 400 fares per month. Or figure it out on a per-mile basis - like the average fare is 4 miles (let's say) so the average driver does 1600 miles/mo.
Figure out the per-ride or per-mile fee and roll that into the fares. Done and done.
(frankly this is being generous - delivery drivers and waitresses are paid "per fare" too, and we still expect their employers to pay for their benefits.)
Really what needs to happen though is we implement government-provided universal healthcare and maybe a basic income, and then you can have all the wacky gig-economy payment schemes you want.
I don't think the economics dictate such a shift. I have had jobs where I was paid hourly, could start and stop at will, and for which I received a W2. (This was for a temp agency in CA.)
Is there anything in CA law that prevent Lyft from basically doing exactly what they had been doing but also paying payroll taxes on driver income?
It's not that the law dictates this shift, it's that the economics do. Requiring full employment means you can hire less drivers.
If you have less drivers, you need more control over when they drive in order to make sure when customers are looking for a ride, they can find one, hence shifts.